Coaching and the Steinbach 10k

I’m coaching in the local high school this year for the first time and am really enjoying it. It is something I’ve wanted to do for such a long time and finally found something and committed to it. It’s always difficult to get a way to the school but always find it so rewarding. Our team is tiny, but motivated so that works well. I’ve been doing this for 3 months now and we are building towards some competitions in the New Year. The guys are so attentive to learn and they are trying very hard to impress. I find myself having to hold them back from doing to hard of an effort a lot of the time.

But yesterday I scheduled our third test race, just to check their progress. I was very confident they had improved a lot since our last test (November 1) and wanted to show them that to encourage and build them up. With much satisfaction, their old best times were blown away. The guys and I were thrilled. I have one athlete, Rene who moved from Germany a year ago. He bested his time by an incredible improvement and you could see it in his eyes how excited he was. After we were finishing, he kept asking “how much faster was I?”. I finally found a big piece of paper, scribbled across it his times from the last tests and then finally this one. I told him to give it to his mom…

Also the planning for the Steinbach 10k Race is going along very well. Had a couple of meetings in the last week and things are starting to move. We have a highly motivated committee so that really helps.

Really enjoying these new opportunities and it seems more are popping up all the time. 2007 was really a re-awakening into the sport world and 2008 is going to be way better. It’s always hard to give the time as it seems it’s so limited, but find it so very rewarding.